Fvwm Commands

• Fvwm Commands
  • Issuing Commands
  • Types of Commands
  • Custom Commands

Fvwm is configured and controlled though an extensive list of commands. These commands control all aspects of Fvwm.

Issuing Commands

Commands are sent to Fvwm though a variety of methods:

• When starting Fvwm, all commands in the Fvwm2rc configuration file are processed.

• Commands can be issued directly to Fvwm using the FvwmConsole or FvwmCommand modules.

• Commands are bound to key and mouse Bindings, which are processed when the key and/or mouse is pressed.

• Commands can be triggered when an event happens and issued to Fvwm via FvwmEvent.

• Fvwm Modules communicate to Fvwm by issuing commands, which Fvwm then processes. These are triggered depending on the module.

Types of Commands

Commands control all aspects of Fvwm. Here is a small list of things commands can do:

• Configurations: create window Decor, set window Styles, create Menus, create Colorsets, and configure all aspects of Fvwm.

• Actions: move and/or resize windows, change virtual pages and desktops, Iconify/Maximize/Shade/etc windows, run external commands, and various other actions.

Custom Commands

Besides just the commands Fvwm provides, users can program multiple commands to be processed by Fvwm at once. This greatly extends the configurability of Fvwm to be able to link multiple commands together into a single command.

• Users can write their own custom Functions which can combine multiple commands together to achieve a variety of effects.

• External scripts can be used to create commands and read via PipeRead which allows users to greatly extend what Fvwm can do. For example fvwm provides a perl script fvwm-menu-directory which creates menus from a directory or a python script fvwm-menu-desktop which creates menus from an XDG deskop menu.

• A combination of both functions and scripts can be used, for example ThumbnailsAsIcons is a function that runs an external script using imagemagick to create an icon from a screenshot of a window.

Note: Fvwm does not wait to complete one command before running another command, as such when sending Fvwm multiple commands, they may not be completed in the order issued. See FunctionSynchronisation for details.